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Scenes from the “Strawberry Fete” held at Torquay in Devon in the United Kingdom on Alexandra Day, Wednesday 27 June 1917. Promoted by the Four Allied Trades: Dairymen, Fruiterers, Grocers and Bakers, the fete was both a fund-raiser and a morale booster.

Ida Willis’ service as a nurse during
WWI saw her involved in virtually all the theatres of war in which New Zealand
forces served. In these excerpts from two radio interviews recorded in the
1960s, she recalls the long hours involved in treating wounded men in northern
France, especially when a battle was underway.

The New Zealand Military Hospital at Walton-on-Thames was the first English hospital to be established for Kiwi
soldiers during the First World War. It was officially opened on Saturday 31
July 1915, in a ceremony attended by “one of the largest gatherings of New
Zealanders that has ever assembled" in the UK. (Evening Post, 24 September 1915, p.4)

This film clip shows NZ High
Commissioner Thomas Mackenzie and William Lord Plunket at the hospital’s
official opening ceremony on 31 July 1915. Lord Plunket was a former Governor
of New Zealand and the chair of the NZ War Contingent Association, formed on
London at the outbreak of the war to support wounded NZ troops. The Association
helped to select the hospital premises, and its members later visited
convalescing patients.

A report issued in March 1916 observed that wounded and convalescing Anzac troops were falling in love with their nurses, and marrying them. Officials were concerned that these marriages, made in haste during
exceptional circumstances, might not be wise. The situation became further complicated as servicemen
applied for grants to bring their new brides back to Australia.

Over 3,000 Australian nurses volunteered during the First World War, working in hospitals, including hospital ships and trains,
and in field stations closer to the front line. This film shows scenes of
Allied forces medical staff and stations taken throughout the Western Front,
1916-1918: “No
words can describe the awfulness of the wounds. Bullets are nothing. It is the
shrapnel that tears through the flesh and cuts off limbs”

Facilities for evacuating and treating men wounded on Gallipoli were woefully inadequate. The British military command had not anticipated such
large numbers of casualties, who often waited for days unattended on the narrow
beach before they could be transported by ship to a hospital. Alexander
McLachlan, a Scots officer on board the transport ship Saturnia, recalls
in this 1969 interview how he and his colleagues were unable to cope with the vast
numbers of sick and wounded.

New Zealand soldiers board a ship. It may be a hospital ship returning them to New
Zealand, as some of the men are visibly wounded, using crutches and walking
sticks. A civilian woman can be seen in the opening frames, indicating that
this scene may have been shot in England.

Three New Zealand nurses - Elizabeth Young, Mary Gould and Jeanne Peek (née
Sinclair) - recount their experiences of the sinking of the troopship S.S. Marquette on 23 October 1915. The nurses
were part of the New Zealand No. 1 Stationary Hospital unit, which was sailing
on the troop transport from Alexandria, Egypt, to Salonika (Thessaloniki) in
Greece, when their ship was struck by a torpedo from a German U-boat.

Thirty-two New Zealand medical staff, including ten nurses, were killed when the troop
transport ship SS Marquette was sunk
by a torpedo from a German U-boat on 23 October 1915. The Marquette
was en route from Alexandria to Salonika, carrying troops of the British 29th
Division Ammunition Column, Royal Field Artillery, along with their equipment
and animals. The medical personnel, equipment and stores of the New Zealand No.
1 Stationary Hospital were also on board. Questions
were later asked about why a hospital unit was travelling with an ammunition
column, which made the ship a legitimate military target.

In
this 1965 recording two survivors, Herbert Hyde and Alexander Prentice of the
New Zealand Medical Corps, recall the shipwreck and their impressions of why
the disaster happened.

The Australian-born and New Zealand-based doctor Agnes Bennett refused to let routine sexism keep her out
of the war. She offered her services to the New Zealand Army as soon as war broke out
but was turned down because she was a woman. Undeterred, she paid her own
passage to Europe, intending to join the French Red Cross. In May 1915 she was
sailing through the Red Sea when word reached the ship of the casualties
arriving in Egypt from the Gallipoli campaign. She disembarked at the next
opportunity and began working in the over-stretched military hospitals of Cairo,
with the status and pay of an army captain. Dr Bennett recalls her wartime
experiences in this recording, made in 1959.

When Australia entered the First World War in support of Britain, ships were urgently needed
to transport troops to the distant battlefields. The hastily refitted ships
also had to carry the troops’ horses and military stores, plus wool, metals,
meat, flour and other foodstuffs, mainly for the armies of Britain and France.
This film shows the loading and departure of troops and horses
aboard HMAT (His Majesty’s Australian Transport) A20Hororata from Port
Melbourne, Victoria on 18 October 1914. Troops move up the gangplanks of the transport ship while horses are
taken up another gangplank. A tug then tows the Hororata out of port and it joins other ships in the convoy to head out to sea.